Review of Adobe Creative Suite 5

Barence writes "Adobe today updated its Creative Suite software to version 5, and PC Pro has an absolutely massive collection of reviews. Along with an overview of the entire suite, from Design to Web to Production bundles, every individual component gets the full in-depth treatment. It includes video demonstrations of Photoshop CS5's fabulous Content-Aware fill trick and new Puppet Warp function; a long-awaited step up to 64-bit for Premiere Pro CS5; and big updates to Dreamweaver CS5, After Effects CS5, and the rest."

Comments

Nuts.

[tsm_sf]

Aw man, my CS4 torrent had just finally finished.

Re:Any update on the export to iPhone?

[c_sd_m]

Hope they atleast release the Actionscript to Obj-C cross compiler so that people can at least attempt to use it for themselves, if not distribute it through the App Store.

Or for enterprise (proprietary, in-house) use.

Gushing, ignoring the important issues

[Blakey Rat]

It's not an overview, it's a gushing, excited press release. And it doesn't even drop one word on my most important concern: is Adobe continuing their trend of writing awful, inconsistent, ugly, usually-slow UIs?

The fact that that, after Macromedia's was acquired, I'd actually pay extra to get Flash 8's UI back... well, that tells you something. How the hell do you write a UI worse than Macromedia's? That takes the kind of talent only Adobe can offer I guess... IBM should hire these guys to do Lotus Notes next. ;)

Re:Gushing, ignoring the important issues

[jollyreaper]

I've been dabbling with these products for years now and it just never seems like the extra bloat and resource hogging provides enough additional return to make it worth the effort.

Re:Gushing, ignoring the important issues

[PenguSven]

is Adobe continuing their trend of writing awful, inconsistent, ugly, usually-slow UIs?

This came up a while ago, on John Nack (PS product manager)'s blog. Basically they think their custom UI stuff for CS is the beez knees, and you unlucky shmoes who "have to use" CS will be getting MORE not less of their crap in future (including CS5) versions.

Re:Gushing, ignoring the important issues

[BlackPignouf]

PROTIP: Stop caring about the UI, learn some keyboard shortcuts every day, and use Photoshop in fullscreen mode with as few panels as possible (e.g. histogram, layers and layers adjustments)

Aaaaargghh

[MoleyGhost]

I TOLD my company to wait a couple months, but noooo, they just HAD to go and buy CS4 last week...

Re:Upgrade policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just purchased Dreamweaver CS4 3 weeks ago. I wonder what their upgrade policy is?

I'd imagine their upgrade policy is "Yes, we want you to buy the upgrade as well."

Re:I predict

[HopefulIntern]

removing an ex from all your photos

..and pasting her into pictures with hardcore porn. Pictures which then are posted on 4chan.

Waste of time...

[Roogna]

Sadly after their ridiculous always broken DRM in CS3 I stopped buying Adobe products. The only unfortunate thing is that I've still yet to find a replacement for Illustrator since Freehand was killed. Ahh well...

Re:Waste of time...

[Devout_IPUite]

Have you played with Inkscape? If not, check it out. If yes, shucks.

Re:Content-Aware Fill = Old

[supersloshy]

Except that actually involves using GIMP... GIMP. People like me can't stand the interface despite the nifty features it may or may not have.

From what I can gather, the main reason people despise the GIMP UI is because they're so used to the designs of other programs. I've heard it said before that people that get used to GIMP, when they try Photoshop, find its UI to be "horrible" as well. Personally I like the GIMP interface and I don't see what's so horrible about it; might I remind you that if you hate its current UI so much, GIMP 2.8 (being released later this year) will have a single window mode so people don't complain as loud.

Re:Eclipse, Java, GIMP, Blender3D CS5?

[vbraga]

Inkscape?

Re:FLOSS alternative?

[MrNaz]

There's no FLOSS alternative to the Adobe suite.
Photoshop vs GIMP = No contest
Illustrator vs Inkscape = Maybe passable alternative
Premiere vs Cinelerra = Don't make me vomit
OnLocation vs dvgrab+kino+some other misc tools = Well, it's like saying that you can do anything emacs can do with sed, awk, grep and cat.

InDesign has no FLOSS alternative. Yea, there are toolsets that can do the things that OnLocation, Encore, AfterEffects etc can do, but they're just a bunch of tools with no integration. The Adobe suite is a whole, integrated polished set of products.

I think if you want to see an example of what the open source method of software design (many people scratching their own little itch and putting the resultant code into a gigantic unsorted global code library) can *not* do, look at the Adobe Suite.

Re:FLOSS alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation:
"I believe in morality but I don't think I'm significant enough to have to abide by it".

Re:FLOSS alternative?

[tsm_sf]

"I believe in morality but I don't think I'm significant enough to have to abide by it".

Can't help but notice that the only time people talk about morality is when they want money. I happen to think that my point of view is entirely moral, but then I suppose our morals must differ. Babypuncher.

Re:Biggest Improvement They Could Make

[djlemma]

Who ever said you couldn't buy Photoshop by itself? It costs about $700, but it's a lot less than the full creative suite.
Try looking at amazon next time.

Re:FLOSS alternative?

[vanderbosch]

CS actually makes this really easy to do.....